Chapter 56
As a general rule, Hela doesn’t mind robbing the dead. They’re gone, after all, and it’s a hard world—-no sense in making it even harder for yourself because you can’t let a dead person be dead. It’s one of the reasons people don’t like Scouts, but she’s never much cared about that.
But there’s something downright spooky about robbing a body in a Talusar monastery.
Maybe it’s the light, and the way it flutters as the air moves; maybe it’s the way everything echoes and whistles in this place; maybe it’s the knowledge that somewhere underground are a bunch of Talusar with tattooed throats who could give her the Fever by breathing on her.
Whatever the reason, as she strips the jacket from one of the guards Theren killed on the way in, she has the chills.
She puts the jacket on, picks up a fallen longsword, and moves as fast as she can toward the central hallway. The axon, Elegy called it, when she was describing the layout of the place.
But the little sketch Orda gave them didn’t capture how beautiful the monastery was.
The hallway is full of stained--glass windows.
The first one she sees is a huge rendering of the planet Earth.
Sometimes she forgets how big their planet is, and how small Losan is, just a speck on the green glass.
Her steps falter for a moment as she gazes up at the intricate glass panes.
Then she pulls herself together and keeps walking.
She spots two guards stationed at the very end of the hallway, on either side of the double doors that open up to the other section of the building, the one that Arias, Parekh, and Orda are in. She swallows hard, and makes a decision.
An ironclad Scout rule: when you get into a bind, lie your ass off.
She runs, passing more stained--glass windows: a detailed rendering of the Cenobium, perched alone on the salt flat; the great palace of the emperor standing on its hill across the border from Nusanta; the mysterious shrouded febra mine of Euroa, with amber glass glinting here and there.
By the time she reaches the end of the hallway, she’s out of breath, which gives her a second to assess the guards on either side of the door.
One of them is big, with a longsword as heavy as hers; the other is smaller and slim, with a rapier at her hip.
Hela points over her shoulder with her thumb.
“Intruders,” she says. “North door—-”
“We already got the alert for intruders at the south door,” the small, slim guard says, their voice high and irritated. “That’s why we’re locked down.”
Hela plays up her breathlessness, shaking her head. “More intruders. Let me in, I have to warn them, we need to redistribute—-”
The big guard frowns at her. “There’s blood on your jacket.”
“You’re damn right there’s blood on my jacket!” Hela snaps. “Why do you think I’m running through this building like a damn idiot trying to warn everyone? We’re under attack.”
She’s ready to kill them. That’s what she tells herself, anyway. She’s ready to kill them, even though she really hopes she won’t have to. She’s never killed anyone before, after all, and it would be really nice not to start right now, with this mountain of a guard who has freckles on his nose—-
But the smaller guard just tugs open one of the doors, and Hela rushes through it with a grateful smile in their direction.
She feels like she’s sneaking into the world’s fanciest dormitory.
Everything is the same carved--wood, copper--trimmed, needlessly decorative bullshit, and she tries not to touch any of it, because it feels wrong to mark it up with her greasy fingerprints.
She tries to think of Orda’s sketch, but she only memorized the route that she would need to get to the augur.
She turns down another hallway, this one finishing in a dead end that she thinks she heard Orda mention to Arias earlier.
She rushes toward the door and opens it.
Inside it is a lavish bedroom, with a lump under the blankets—-no, two lumps, Hela realizes, as one of them sits up, her bedraggled hair hanging across her face.
“What the hell—-” the woman says, and Hela is about to apologize when she hears a scream.
She takes off running. Her lungs burn, begging her to slow down, but she can’t slow down.
She sprints past the top of the stairwell and down the next hallway where Parekh, Arias, and Orda must have gone.
She turns the next corner and finds herself face--to--face with a Talusar soldier in febra armor, holding a shortsword up to her throat.
His hair is shaved brutally short, a nick around his ear still bright red.
Over his shoulder, she sees Parekh lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Arias is on his knees next to her, his hands in the air. And standing above him is a woman, even taller than Hela herself, her fair hair braided in a crown around her face.
She’s beautiful, and Hela thinks of the religious texts she had to read for that one history class in high school, where the angels would appear to mortals and immediately tell them not to be afraid. Angels, Hela decided then, must look scary as fuck.
This woman’s no angel, of course. She’s Rava Vidar.
And the sight of her sends electric terror through Hela’s entire body. This woman massacred the Cedrae in Calgara. She killed the Sword of Cedre. She wreaked God knows what havoc on Theren Forint—-
“Drop your weapon,” Rava says, in English. “Or get a blade through your jugular. Your choice.”
Hela is a little impressed that Rava knows English well enough to use official anatomical terms like “jugular.” But there’s no choice involved in this: Hela drops her sword.
Parekh isn’t moving. Arias looks up, hesitant, his eyes bright with tears. She wishes there was something she could say to him to make this better—-she wishes she could go back in time and find a way to keep this from happening altogether.
But wishes are bullshit, as her mother was fond of saying.
“What’s your name?” Rava asks her, and it takes Hela a moment to figure out she’s actually expecting a response.
“Tausia Helasz,” Hela replies, too wrecked by everything around her to come up with a clever response.
“Helasz,” Rava repeats. Her mouth quirks into a smile. “Interesting. Well, Tausia—-cousin—-I’m afraid you’re going to die today. But not quite yet.”